Quintet from Slovak Republic Tours U.S. with Pianist Otaki

For Immediate Release

SLOVAK QUINTET ON U.S. DEBUT TOUR

The SUCHON WIND QUINTET from Slovakia makes its American debut this week in Jackson, MS with American pianist MICHIKO OTAKI performing for the newly-formed Mississippi Chambre Music Guild on Friday, January 30^th. The 7:30 pm concert at St. James Episcopal Church opens the classical wind and piano sextet’s month-long tour of the Midwest and Southeast, including an appearance on Atlanta’s renowned Spivey Hall chamber music series.

Their programs feature the Quintet for Piano and Winds by Mozart, the delightfully tuneful Sextet of late-Romantic Austrian composer Ludwig Thuille, the piquant Poulenc Sextet and wind quintets of Farkas, J.C. Bach, and Haydn. Mozart wrote of his Quintet "I myself consider it to be the best thing I have written in my life."

The Suchon Quintet is comprised of principal woodwind players from the Slovak Sinfonietta, the symphony orchestra of Žilina in the Slovak Republic, and was founded in the early 1960´s by students at Žilina's music conservatory. Both the current flutist’s and clarinetist’s fathers were original members of the ensemble. In 1998 the Quintet was named for Slovakia's most important twentieth-century composer, Eugen Suchon (1908 –1993), founder of Slovak National Modernism. They are featuring Suchon’s Serenade, Op. 5 during their tour.

Members of the Suchon Quintet are Ján Figura, flute, Jozef Kovácik, oboe, Bibiána Bienková, clarinet, Ida Chovanová, bassoon, and Jozef Sokol, French horn. The Quintet has performed throughout Central and Eastern Europe as well as in France and Brazil. Slovak Music Life wrote: “The performance wowed us with its technical expertise . . . a highly balanced, harmonious sound.”

Japanese-born pianist Michiko Otaki performed with the Žilina orchestra on tour throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe, and in November played several concerts in the Slovak Republic with the Suchon Quintet. Director of Keyboard Studies at Clayton State University in Atlanta, she has toured and recorded with numerous world-class ensembles including the Warsaw Wind Quintet, Swiss Wind Quintet, Kodály String Quartet, and the Graffe String Quartet, as well as with violist Roger Chase. She has appeared at the National Gallery of Art, the Harvard Musical Association, Princeton University, and the Cleveland Museum of Art among many other prestigious venues. The Washington Post wrote that her artistry was “a tribute to chamber playing of the highest order.”

Complete Tour Schedule

Sextet flyer

For further info: rwam@rwam.cnc.net or 212-581-8478

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